More desserts and Valentine's day

On my quest to try out more cupcakes, I found one for Salted Caramel Cupcakes on the How to Eat A Cupcake blog. These came out really good although I had enough caramel to last me for a year.



A few days later we made a nice dinner for Valentine's Day. Mike made the main course, another Giada recipe, Tilapia with Purple Potato Crust. He took the recommendation not too use too much oil or it gets really oily. It tasted delicious but did not come out as pretty as we had planned.


My side dish was a trio of mashed potatoes. I made garlic, horseradish, and cheddar. It's hard to decide which one I liked best.

Garlic mashed potatoes

Horseradish mashed potatoes

Cheddar mashed potatoes

For dessert I made "healthified" mini chocolate cheesecakes but you would never know they were better for you than the real thing.

Dinner with friends

Who doesn't love a dinner party? In college a group of friends and I would take turns cooking dinner each week and it always was good food and good fun. I tried to replicate my past but this time its turned into couples dinners. We had our good friends over a few weeks ago to start off 2010 and we've been pretty good about getting together once a week.

For our first dinner we made Giada's recipe for Pork Chops Stuffed with Sundried Tomatoes and Spinach which we found on the Food Network website. While I was perusing the Food Network website, I had to check out the best recipes of 2009. Number one was from our favorite person, Alton Brown, so of course I had to make it. His Baked Macaroni and Cheese was deservingly the best recipe of 2009 and I think the four of us ate about 3/4 of the entire recipe. Maggie brought over a fantastic Boston Creme Pie inspired cake. YUM!

Making a roux

Cheesy goodness!

After dinner we pulled out the board games and they introduced us to a new game called Things. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new game. Seriously, this is my new favorite game... Although I still love my Apples to Apples.

Healthy Desserts

In our attempt to eat better, we've been making "healthy" desserts. Mike brought home strawberries a few days ago (with the purpose of making our favorite Strawberry and Spinach salad--I think we ended up making mashed potatoes and chicken instead) and we ate them for dessert with the last bit of cool whip left from my cake baking.

The next day he decided to make his own version of baked apples which turned out delicious. There were a ton of apple slices and it turns out he used FOUR apples! Needless to say, I was too full to finish.



He also whipped up some heavy cream that was left over from my chocolate ganache filling for my final cake in cake class. With a little bit of vanilla bean sugar that I picked up in Denver at the Savory Spice Shop , powdered sugar (he called it his 'secret ingredient' and told me not to look but I snuck a peek--shh! Don't tell!), and cinnamon, the whipped cream was divine.

Documenting meals

So now that I actually put up a blog, I guess its time to start documenting meals. I'm going to do an experiment and take pictures of everything that goes in my mouth for the week and see if it helps me cut back on junk.

So far today I'm sipping coffee and ate an egg mug omlete inspired by the Hungry Girl emails. My omlete had 2 slices of center cut bacon, 1/4 cup orange pepper, 3 small mushrooms, a small handful of cheddar cheese, and 1/2 cup egg whites.

A few weeks ago I went to Chapel Hill for a business school interview at Kenan-Flagler. After my interview I met up with a friend from study abroad in Senegal. She suggested a bakery which turned out to be perfect! Sugarland not only had beautiful cupcakes, they also had home made gelato which was delicious! They had a gorgeous ice cream sundae cupcake and I decided that I had to try my hand at making it later that weekend. So I found a recipe for chocolate ganache filled Ice Cream Sundae cupcakes with buttercream frosting on the Sweetest Kitchen blog and used it to make these delicious treats!

It mentions using "the cone method" to fill the cupcakes and not having any idea what this meant, I googled "the cone method" to learn more. Baking Bites blog has a great explanation complete with step-by-step instructions.

Removing the "cone."

The finished product!

While I was home looking for recipes I came across this on the Martha Stewart website. Sunflowers are my favorite flower so I knew I had to try this one. I used the recipe from the ice cream sundae cupcakes for the base and substituted chocolate chips for the chocolate covered sunflowers in the center from the Martha Stewart recipe.